Excerpts
About the Book
About the Author

Excerpts

We were two hundred two hundred miles at sea and on an Italian ship.

To Pompeii, ride on horseback . . . guard against hot lava coming fast for us.

All sit up to witness the burial at sea . . . He dug his own grave and the iron took him to his last resting place . . . while the steamer moved on . . . leaving him to rest beneath the never ceasing billows. 

. . . saw the beautiful red cheeked Swiss girls . . . the reddest cheeks I ever saw . . .  we felt like asking them to take a seat and let us wait on them . . . 

 . . . to see the moon make her appearance above the eastern horizon. . . . came up from beneath the waves in all her splendor as if . . . just washed by the Eastern waters .  . . never witnessed her more beautiful . . . 

. . . we discovered that we had a . . . case of lovemaking on board . . .  young man from Genoa and one of the young actresses. . .

. . . gave us some of the golden sand from the hole made by the cross . . . 

The . . . young . . . divers . . .for coins had our attention . . . we had them arrange in lines to have their pictures taken in the same suits as when they were born.

Tassoes Tomb . . . locked in . . . had to scale the walls . . .done very gracefully by the ladies. 

Switzerland . . . the land about whose beauty we read . . . beautifully clad in white . . . not half  told of her beauty. 

English cars a little more comfortable than the French, but also heated with water. 

London . . . countryside looks just like a garden. 

Left Paris . . . found a cold train but managed to live. 

English channel took 80 minutes to cross . . . was a little seasick. 

  Daddy Pa’s Diary (1894-95) is the daily log of a young dentist’s journey from Rio de Janeiro through the Strait of Gibraltar and around Europe before returning home to the United States.  It was published by his granddaughter in 2004. Though the excursion lasted only two and one half months, the debonair Dr. Robert Peacock Jackson penned a memorable document chronicling his day by day life on a steamer.  After landing in Italy, the trip’s log continued on through Austria, France, and England in the dead of winter.  The excursion, albeit first class, today would make a seasoned hostel lodger flinch. While he and some young doctors had spent two years practicing dentistry in Rio de Janeiro prior to the journey, they had not yet traveled to the land from whence their families emigrated.  The journal is lyrical, smacks of good humor, and reads like a classic in its rendition.  It begs to be read for its historical context and nostalgic references by a young man abroad for the first time. 

 A short biography of Robert Peacock Jackson is included in the introduction and in the conclusion of the Diary.  At the conclusion of his venture abroad, Dr. Jackson returned to his hometown of Baconton, Georgia, to practice dentistry only intermittently, turning instead to advantageous opportunities with available Southern acreage.  Admittedly not really cut out to be a farmer, he easily epitomized what true Southerners called a Gentleman Farmer.  He contributed most of his life in service to the Baconton community by way of serving on the board of education, boosting the local economy with his masterful business ventures, and raising the bar with cultural activities for a town detached from big city opportunities.  He married Lena Ethel Bowls, with whom he parented and educated two sons and three daughters.  It is on the land that Lena Bowls brought to their marriage that the Jackson family still meets each year to celebrate Thanksgiving and their Southern heritage.  They gather at a small cottage on a small pond behind a small sign that announces “Pretty Pond Plantation.”  Dr. Robert Peacock Jackson would be pleased.  A diary is a mysterious way for our great, great grandchildren to know us long after we have served our time.

 Dr. Robert Peacock Jackson (1868-1955) might be of interest to other Peacocks and their heirs.  They could be descendants of his grandfather, Robert Peacock, who was born in Wayne County, North Carolina, in 1792.  Robert Jackson’s mother was the fourth child of Robert Peacock’s second  wife, Polly Virginia. With his first wife Welthy and his second wife America, Robert Peacock fathered twenty children.  Polly Virginia Brown Davis, the granddaughter of Robert Peacock Jackson and the great, great granddaughter of Robert Peacock, published the diary in hopes of keeping the Jackson family heritage alive for the many grand and great, great, great grandchildren now part of the Jackson and Peacock Clans.

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